Blue Sword
by Nyanonymous
Summary: After the untimely death of her father, Sakura is forced to relocate to Istan with her brother, a border town in the newly conquered Suna. But Native blood is strong and when the king needs aid against the Northerners, a new discovery could be made. T now


I'd been thinking of this doing this for a while. Don't worry my stuff'll come in later. but right now I own nothing. Robin McLinkey owns the story line so far and I think it's Toshio Masuda who owns Naruto. I don't own any right now. But as soon as I get to where my plot can come in I'll let you know. I don't even own the title. So right now go look at Robin Mclinkey's Blue Sword. it's a really good book!

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She scowled at her glass of orange juice. To think that she had been delighted hen she first arrive here- was it only three months ago?- with the prospect of fresh orange juice every day. But she had been eager to be delighted; this was to be her home, and she wanted badly to like it, to be grateful for it -to behave well, to make her brother proud of her and Sir Jiriya and Lady Tsunade pleased with their generosity.

Lady Tsunade had explained that the orchards only a few days south a west of here were the finest in the country, and many of the oranges she had seen at Konoha, before she came out here, had probably come from those same orchards. It was hard to believe in orange groves as she looked out the window, across the flat deserty plain beyond the Residency, unbroken by anything more vigorous than a few patches of harsh grass and stunted sand-colored bushed until it disappeared at the feet of the black and copper-brown mountains.

But there was fresh orange juice every day.

She was the first down to the table every morning, and was gently teased by Lady Tsunade and Sir Jiriya about her healthy young appetite; but it wasn't hunger that drove her out of ed so early. Since her days were empty or purpose she couldn't sleep when night came, and by dawn each morning she was more than ready for the maid to enter her room, push back the curtains from the tall windows, and hand her a cup or tea. she was often out of bed when the woman arrived, and dressed, sitting at her window, for her bedroom window faced the same direction as the breakfast room, taring at the mountains. The servants thought kindly of her, as she gave them little extra work; but a lady who rose and dressed herself so early, and without assistance, was certainly a little eccentric. They knew of her impoverished background; that explained a great deal; but she was in a fine house now, and her host and hostess were only too willing to give her anything she might want, as they had no children of their own. She might try a little harder to adapt to so pleasant an existence.

She did try. She know what the thoughts behind the looked she servants gave her were; she had dealt with servants before. But she was adapting to her new life as est as her energetic spirit could. She might have screamed, and hammered on the walls with her fists, or jumped over the low windowsill in her room, clambered to the ground by the ivy trellis (special ivy, bred to withstand the desert hear, carefully watered by Sir Jiriya's gardener every day), and run off toward the mountains; but she was trying her best to be good. So she was merely first to the breakfast table.

Sir Jiriya and Lady Tsunade were all that was kind to her, and she was fond of them after a few weeks in their company. They had, indeed, been far more than kind. When her father died a year ago, Naruto, a very junior military adjutant, had laid the difficulty of an unmarried sister and an entailed estate before Sir Jiriya, and begged for advice. (She heard all this, to her acute embarrassment, from Naruto, who wanted to bu sure she understood how much she had to e grateful for.) He and his wife had said that they would be happy to offer her a home with them, and Naruto too relieved to think hard about the propriety of such a godsend, had written to her and said, Come out. He had not specifically said, Mind your manners, but she understood that too.

She hadn't any choice. She had known, because her father had told her five years ago when her mother died, that she would have no inheritance, what money there was was tied up very strictly for the eldest son. "Not that Naru will mistreat you." their father had said, with the ghost of a smile, "but I feel that, with your temperament, you had best have as long as possible a warning to resign yourself to it. You'll like being dependent on your brother even less, I fancy , than you like being dependent on me." He tapped his fingers on his desk. The thought that lay silent between them did not need to be spoken aloud: that it was not likely she would marry. She was proud, and if she had not been, her parents would have been proud for her. And there is little market for penniless blue-bloods of no particular beauty- especially when the blueness of the blood is suspected to have been diluted by a questionableness exactly consisted of, Sakura was not sure. With the self-centeredness of childhood she had not thought to ask; and later, after she had realized that she did not care for society nor society for her, she had no desire to ask.

The shipboard journey east on the Cecilia had been long but uneventful. She had found her sea legs almost at once, and had made friends with a middle-aged lady, also traveling alone, who asked no personal questions, and loaned her novels, freely to her young companion, and discussed them with her upon their return. She had let her own mind go numb, and had read the novels, and sat in the sun, and strolled the decks, and no thought about the past of the future.

They docked at Stzara without mishap, and she found the earth heaved under her strangely when she first set foot ashore. Naruto had been granted a month's leave to meet her and escort her north to her new home. He looked younger than she had expected; he had gone overseas three years ago, and had not been to Konoha again since. He was affectionate to her at their reunion, but wary; they seemed to have little in common any more. I shouldn't be surprised, she thought; it's been a long time sine we played together every day, before Naru was sent off to school. I'm an encumbrance now, and he has his career to think of. But it would be nice to be friends, she thought wistfully. When she pressed him to give her some idea of what she could expect of her new life, he shrugged and said: "You'll see. The people are like Konoha, you know, You needn't have much to do with the natives. There are the servants of course, but they are all right. Don't worry about it." And he looked at her with so worried a face that she didn't know whether to laugh or to shake him. She said, "I wish you would tell me what is worrying _you._" Variations of this conversation occurred several times during the first days of their journey together. At this point there would be a long silence.

Finally, as if he could bear it no more, he burst out: "You won't be able to go on as you did at home, you know."

"But what do you mean?" She hadn't thought much about native servants, or her position, yet: and obviously Naruto know her well enough of old to guess that now. She had written him letters, several each year, since he had gone overseas, but he had rarely answered. She had not minded very much, although she had thought occasionally. as when his six hastily scrawled lines at Christmas arrived, that it would have been pleasant if he were a better correspondent; but it hadn't troubled her. It troubled her now, for she felt that she was facing a stranger- a stranger who perhaps knew too much about her and her accustomed way of life.

She blinked at him, and tried to rearrange her thoughts. She was excited, but she was frightened too, and Naruto was all she had. The memory of their father's funeral, and she the only family member standing beside the minister, and of the small handful of servants and tenants whom she had known all her life and who were far away from her now, was still raw ans recent. She didn't want to think about her new life; she wanted time to ease into it gradually. She wanted to pretend that she was a tourist. "Naru- Naruto, what do you mean?"

Naruto must have seen the homesick bewilderment on her face. He looked back at her unhappily. "Oh-err-it's not your house, you know."

"Of course I know that!" she exclaimed. "I appreciate what the Masai's are doing for you and for me by- by taking me in." And she added carefully: "You explained all that to me in your letter."

He nodded.

"Do you think I don't know how to behave myself?" she said at last, goaded, and was rewarded by another long silence while she felt the blood rising in her face.

"It's not that I don't think you know _how_," he said at last. She flinched and he began: "An-"

"Sakura," she said firmly. "It's still Sakura." He looked at her with dismay, and she realized that she was confirming his fears about her, but she wasn't going to yield about that of all things. The realization that she would insist on being called Sakura seemed to silence him, because he did not try to reason with her further, but withdrew into his corner seat and stared out the window.

She could tell by his voice that he did not want to hurt her, but that he was truly apprehensive. She and Naruto had been wild animals together as small children; but when Naru had been packed off to school, their mother had dragged her into the house, mostly by the ears of the nape of the neck, and begun the long difficult process of reforming her into something resembling a young lady.

"I suppose I should have started years ago," she told her sulky daughter; "but you were having such a good time, and I knew Naru would be sent away soon. I thought it hardly fair that your lessons should start sooner." This lifted the could a little from her daughter's brow, so she added with a smile, "And, besides, I've always liked riding horses and climbing trees and falling into ponds better myself." After such an open avowal of sympathy from the enemy, lessons could never be quite awful; on the other hand, they were not perhaps as thorough as they might have been. On particularly beautiful days they often packed a lunch and rode out together, mother and daughter, to inspire themselves- the mother said- with a little fresh air; but the books as often as not stayed in the saddlebags all day. The daughter learned to love books, particularly adventure novels where the hero rode a beautiful horse and ran all the villains through with his silver sword, but her embroidery was never above passable; and she only learned to dance after her mother pointed out that such grace and balance as she might learn on the dance floor would doubtless stand her good stead in the saddle. She learned the housekeeping necessary in an old ramshackle country house well enough to take over the management of theirs successfully during her mother's last illness; and the first horrible months after her mother's death were made easier by the fact that she had something to do. As the first pin of loss wore away, she realized also that she liked being useful.

In the shock five years later of her father's death, and with the knowledge that she must leave her home, and leave it in the indifferent hands of a business manager, it had occurred to her to be relieved that the little eastern station at the the farthest-flung border of the Konoha empire where Naruto had been posted, and where she was about to join him, was as small and isolated as it was. Her mother had escorted her to such small parties and various social occasions as their country neighborhood might offer, and while she knew she had "conducted herself creditably" she had not enjoyed herself. For one thing, she was simply to big: taller than all the women, taller than most of the men. But her figure was purely feminine, her legs were just too long; that also contributed to her long torso as well. She was fairly balanced as far as a chest. Enough to see, but not overly large, same for her well rounded behind. It might have been a little on the larger side, but she would never know.

Sakura could get nothing more useful out of her brother about his private misgivings as the small rickety train carried them north. So she began to ask general questions- a tourist's questions- about her new country: and then she had better luck. Naruto began visibly to thaw, for he recognized the sincerity of her interest, and told her quite cheerfully that the town at the end of their journey, where Sir Jiriya and Lady Tsunade awaited them, was the only town of any size at all within three days of it. "There's a wireless station out in the middle of nowhere where the train stops- it exists only for the train to have someplace to stop-and that's all." The town's name as Istan, after the natives' Ihistan, which was deemed too hard to pronounce. Beyond Istan was a scattering of small depressed cottages in carefully irrigated fields where a tough local tassel-headed grain called korf was grown. Istan had been a small village before the people of Konoha came, where the farmers and herders and nomads from the surrounding country came to market every fortnight and a few pot-menders and rug-weavers kept shops. The Konohains used it as an outpost, and expanded it, although the native marketplace remained at its center; and built a fort at the eastern edge of it, which was maned the General Leonard Ernest Mundy.

Istan had lately become a place of some importance in the governmental network the Konohains had laid over the country they had conquered eighty years before. It as still an isolated pot, and no on went there ho didn't have to; for it was at the edge of the great northern desert of the peninsular continent the Konohains called Suna. But thirteen years ago the Aeel Mines had been discovered in the Ramid Mountains to the northwest, and in the last eight years the Mines had been officially declared the most profitable discovery on the entire Sunain continent, and that was saying a great deal. The profits on oranges alone paid the wages of half the civil servants in the Province.

"The Mines are awful to get to, though; the Ramids are very nasty going. Istan is the only feasible route to the Mines, and is the last ton large enough to re-supply any caravan or company going that way or coming back out again. That's why we got the rail road, finally. Before that we were tho only reason anyone would want to come so far, and our attractions are limited. But the Mines are the big thing now. They may even figure out a way to dig a road through the Ramids. I wish them luck."

Istan also remained tactically important, for while south of i the boundary to Konoha's territory swing rapidly east, the Konohains failed to push it back any nearer the mountains of the north and east. The natives, perhaps from learning to cope with the desert to survive at all, had probed to be a tougher breed than their southern cousins.

Some of this Sakura had read at Konoha when she had first heard of Naruto's posting three years before. But she felt the reality of it now, with the western wind blowing don on her from the rich Aeel Mines, and the odd greenish-bronze tint in the sky, and the brilliant red of the sunsets. She saw the dull brown uniforms of the Konohain soldiers stationed here, with the blue band wrapped around their upper arm, and metal centered in the cloth with a spiral leaf symbol engraved; that indicated they served in the Sunain province of the Konohain sovereignty. There were more soldiers, the farther they traveled. "It's still a sore point that Istan is the eastern frontier; we can't seem to bear the idea that the border doesn't run straight, north to south, because we would like it to. They keep threatening to mount new offensives, but Colonel Asuma- he's in charge or the old Mundy- says that they won't do it. And who wants to own a lot of desert anyway? It's the farmland in the south- and the Mines- that make it worthwhile to be here."

She encouraged him to talk about His Majesty's Government of the Royal Province of Suna, and if she did not listen as closely as she might to the descriptions of the ranks and duties of the civil servants Naruto had the most contact with, she arrived at Istan at last with some small idea of how Konohains in general were expected to respond to Suna. And she had seen korf with her own eyes, and a band or the wandering tinkers known as dilbadi, and the changing color of the earth underfoot, from the southern red to central brown to northern yellow-gray. She knew a broad-leafed ilpin tree from the blue evergreen torthuk, and when Lady Tsunade met her with a corsage of the little rosy-pink pimchies flowers, she greeted them by name.

Lady Tsunade was a small voluptuous woman with big hazel eyes and wavy blonde hair pulled in to two low pigtails, and almost a wistful look of fading beauty. Her husband, Sir Jiriya, was as tall as Naruto and much broader; he must ride sixteen stone, Sakura thought dispassionately as she shook his hand. He had a tan face and long spiky white hair pulled back into a thick pony tail that reached well past mid back. If his dark eyes were a little shallow, there were laugh lines generously around them, and his smile was warm. She felt as if they had looked forward to her coming, and she relaxed a little; there was none of the loftiness she was expecting toward a poor relation-someone else's poor relation at that.

Sir Jiriya during the first evening gave her a complete history of Suna, its past, its conquest by the Konohains, its present, and its likely future, but most of it she was too tired to follow. Lady Tsunade's occasion quick comments, when her husband stopped to draw breath, about Sakura's present comfort were much more welcome, although she tried not to show it. But midway through the evening, as Sir Jiriya was gesturing with his liqueur glass and even Naruto was looking a bit glassy-eyed, Lady Tsunade caught her new charge's eye for a long moment. A look of patience and affection passed between them; and Sakura thought that perhaps all would be well, and she went up to bed in good spirits.

For the first few days in Istan she unpacked, and looked around her, and only saw the newness of everything. But the Konohains of Istan were a small but thriving community, and she was the latest addition to a society which looked forward to, and welcomed, and cross-examined, and talked about, its additions.

She had always suffered from a vague restlessness, a longing for adventure that she told herself severely was the result of reading too many novels when she was a small child. As she grew up, and particularly after her mother died, she had leaned to ignore that restlessness. She had nearly forgotten about it, till now. She wondered sometimes if her brother felt that impatience of spirit too, if something like it ha had anything to do with his ending up at a small Border station, however tactically important, although his prospects, when he graduated from university, had suggested something better. This was one of the many things she did not ask him. Another question she did not ask was if he ever missed Konoha.

She set down her empty orange-juice glass, and sighed. They'd messed the orange groves, coming north from Stzara, where her ship put her ashore. She picked up her fork from its shining white, neatly folded linen napkin, and turned it so that the sunlight that had glittered through her orange juice now caught in tiny star-bursts across its tines. Don't fidget, she told herself.

This morning she was going to go riding with the two Misses Yamanaka, Ino and Hana. They were near her own age, and the admitted beauties of the station; the entire 4th Cavalry, stationed at the General Mundy were in love with them. But they were also cheerful and open-hearted, and she was fond of them. She had never much cared for beauty, although she was aware that she lacked the classical beauty of most and that her position might have been a little easier if she had not.

They would return from their ride my midmorning, because the sun would be growing too hot for anyone to brave it for pleasure. She planned to ask Lady Tsunade if they might all come back here for lunch. She already knew what the answer would be: "Why, of course! We are always delighted to see them. I am so pleased, my dear, that you should be so clever as to attach the two most charming girls we have here to be your particular friends." Sakura caught herself playing with her fork again, and laid it down emphatically.

This evening there was to be another dance. Naruto had promised to escort her; she had to acknowledge that, however little they found to say to one another now, he was very good about escorting her to parties, and dancing with her- which meant that there was at least one man present whom she did not tower over. Her gratitude was not at all dimmed by the suspicion that he was nursing a secret passion for Ino, nor by the thought, not even a real suspicion, that he might not wan himself made a fool of by his sister's unpopularity. No, his kindness was real; he loved her, she thought, in his silent and anxious way. Perhaps simply being a very junior military adjutant with an unmarried sister suddenly thrust on ones' hands inevitably made one a bet of a prig.

It never occurred to her to speculate whether any of the young men in their shining regimentals that Naru painstakingly introduced her to, and ho then painstakingly asked her to dance, presented themselves from any motive outside a willingness to do their friend Uzumaki a favor by standing up with his oversized sister. It would have surprised her very much to learn of her two or three admirers, who so far resisted the prevailing atmosphere of the barracks as to incline to an altar less populated than that of either Miss Yamanaka. "But she's just like her brother," one of them complained to his best friend, who listened with a friend's patience, although he was himself incapable of seeing the charms of any other woman than Hana Yamanaka. "So damned polite, Oh, she's nice enough, you know. I don't suppose she actually dislikes me," he continued, a bit uncertainly. "But I'm not at all sure she even recognizes me from one day to the next, so it hardly counts."

"Well," said the friend good-humoredly, "Naruto remembers you well enough."

The admirer threw a boot at his friend- the one he hadn't polished yet. "You know what I mean."

"I know what you mean, " Agreed the friend. "A cold fish." The admirer looked up from the boot-blacking angrily and the friend held up the extra boot like a shield. "Naruto's stiff with honor. I daresay his sister's like that. You just don't know her well enough yet."

"Balls, dinner parties," moaned the admirer. "You know what they're like; it could take years." The friend in silent sympathy (thinking of Hana) tossed the boot back, and he began moodily to black it.

The object of his affections, had she known of this conversation, would have agreed with him on the subject of balls and dinner parties. In fact, she would have added the rider that she wasn't sure it could be done at all, getting o know someone at any succession of such parties, however prolonged. And the friend was right about Naruto Uzumaki's powerful sense of honor. He knew well enough that at least two of his friends were falling in love with his sister; but it never crossed his mind to say anything about them to her. He could not compromise the privileged knowledge of friendship in such a way.

And Naruto's sister, oblivious to the fact that she had won herself a place in the station hierarchy, chafed and fidgeted.

Lady Tsunade arrived at the breakfast table next. They had just settled the question of Ino and Hana coming to lunch- in almost the precise words anticipated- when the door to Sir Jiriya's study, across the hall from the breakfast room, opened; and Sir Jiriya and his secretary, Mr. Asuka, entered to breakfast. The two women looked at them in surprise; they had the unmistakable air of men who have been awake several hours, working hard on nothing more than a cup or two of the dark heavy local coffee, and who will rush through their meal now to get back to whatever they have been doing. Neither of them looked very happy about their prospects.

"My dear," said Lady Tsunade. "Whatever is wrong?"

Sir Jiriya ran a hand through his messy white pony tail, accepted a plate of eggs with his other hand, and sat down. He shook his head. Sarutobi Asuka glanced at his employer but said nothing. "Naruto's not here yet," said Sir Jiriya, as if his absence explained everything.

"Naruto-?" said Lady Tsunade faintly.

"Yes. And Colonel Asuma. I'm sorry, my dear," he said, a few mouthfuls of eggs seeming to restore him. "The message came quite out of the blue, in the middle of the hight," he explained through his metaphors as well as his mouthful. "Asuma has been out, trying to find out what he can, and I told him to come to breakfast and tell us what he's learned. With Naruto- that boy knows how to talk to people. Blast them. Blast _him_. He'll be here in a few hours."

His wife stared at him in complete bewilderment, and his young guest averted her eyes when he looked at her, as it was not her place to stare. He laid down his fork and laughed. "Tsu-Tsu, your face is a study. Young Sakura here is going to be a fine ambassador's wife someday, though: look at that poker fact! You really shouldn't look so much like your brother; it makes you too east to read for those of us who know him. Just now you're thinking: Is the old man gone at last? Humor him till we're sure; if he calms down a bit, perhaps we'll get some sense out of him even now."

Sakura grinned back a him, untroubled by his teasing, and he reached across the table, braving candlesticks and an artistically arranged bowl of fruit, to tap her cheek with hes fingers. "A general's wife, on second thought. You'd be wasted on the diplomatic corps; we're all such dry paper-shufflers." He speared a piece of toast with his fork, and Lady Tsunade, whose manners with her own family were a punctilious as if she dined with royalty, looked away. Sir Jiriya piled marmalade on his toast till it began to ooze off the edges, added one more dollop for good measure, and ate it all in three gulps. "Tsu-Tsu, I know I've told you about the difficulties we're having in the North, on this side of the mountains with our lot, and on the far side with whatever it is they breed over there- a very queer bunch, from all we can gather- and it's all begun to escalate, this last year, at an alarming speed. Sakura, Naruto's told you something of this?"

She nodded.

"You may or may or know that our real hold over Suna end just about where his station stands, although technically- on paper- Konoha rule extends right to the foot of those mountains north ad east of here- the Ossanders, which run our from the Ramids, and then that far eastern range you see over the sand, where none of us has ever been... those mountains are the only bits of the old kingdom of Suna still under native rule. There used to be quire a lot of fighting along this border- say, forty years ago. Since then their king- oh yes, there's a king- more or less ignores us, and we more or less ignore him. But odd things- call then odd things; Asuma will tell you what he thinks they are- still happen on that plain, our no-man's-land. So we have the 4th Cavalry here with us.

"Nothing too odd has happened since the current king took the throne around ten years ago, we think- they don't bother to keep us up to date on such things- but it never does to be careless. Um." He frowned and, while frowning, ate another piece of toast. "Everything has been quiet for- oh, at least fifteen years. Nearly as long as I've been here, and that's a long time. As Asuma, though, for stories of what it was like up and down the northern half of this border before that. He has plenty of them." He stood up from the table, and went across the room to the row of windows. He lifted the curtain farther back as he looked out across the desert, as if breadth of view might assist clarity of thought. It was obvious his mind was not on the explanation he was giving; and for all his assumed cheerfulness, he was deeply worried. "Damn!... Excuse me. Where is Asuma? I expected he would have at least sent young Naruto on ahead before now." He spoke to himself, or perhaps to Sarutobi Asuka, who made soothing noises, poured a cup f tea, and took it to Sir Jiriya where he stood squinting into the morning sunlight.

"Trouble?" said Lady Tsunade gently. "More trouble?"

Sir Jiriya dropped the curtain and turned around. "Yes! More trouble." He looked down at his hands, realized he was holding a cup of tea in one of them, and took a swallow from it with the air of a man who does what is expected of him. "There may be war with the North. Asuma thinks so. I'm not sure, but- I don't like the rumors. We must secure the passes through the mountains- particularly Ritger's Gap, which gives anybody coming through it almost a direct line to Istan, and then of course to the whole Province. It may only be some tribal uproar- but it could be war, as real as it was eighty years ago. There aren't many of the old Sunains left- the Hillfolk- but we've been forced to have a pretty healthy respect for them. And if King Gaara decided to throw his chances in with the Northerners-"

There was a clatter in the street below. Sir Jiriya's head snapped around. "There they are at last," he said, and bolted for the front door and threw it open himself, under the scandalized eye of the butler who had emerged from his inner sanctum just too late. "Come in! I've been in high fidgets for the last hour, wondering what's become of you. Have you found out anything that might be of use to us? I have been trying to explaining to the ladies what our problem is."

"Would you care for breakfast?" Lady Tsunade asked without haste, and with her usual placid courtesy. "Jiriya may be trying to explain, but so far he has not succeeded." In response to her gesture, a maid laid two more places at the table. With a jingling of spurs the two newcomers entered, apologized for their dirt, and were delighted to accept some breakfast. Naruto dropped a perfunctory kiss on his sister's cheek on his way to the eggs and ham.

After a few minutes of tea-pouring and butter-passing, while Sir Jiriya strode up and down the room with barely suppressed impatience, it was Lady Tsunade who spoke first. "We will leave you to your business, which I can see is very important, and we won't pester you with demands for explanations. But would you answer just one question?"

Asuma said, "Of course Tsuna. What is it?"

"What is it that has suddenly thrown you into this turmoil? Some unexpected visitor, I gather from what Jiriya said?"

Asuma stared at her. "He didn't tell you-? Good God. It's Gaara himself. He's coming. He never comes near here, you know- none of the real Hillfolk do if they can help it. At best, if we want badly enough to talk to him, we can catch one of his men as they pass through the foothills northeast of here. Sometimes."

"You see," broke in Sir Jiriya, "it makes us hope that perhaps he wished to cooperate with us- not th Northerners. Jack, did you find out anything?"

Asuma shrugged. "Not really. Nothing that we didn't already know- that his coming here is unprecedented, to say the least- and that it is in fact him. Nobody had any better guesses than ours about why, suddenly, he decided to do so."

"But your guess would be-" prompted Sir Jiriya.

Asuma shrugged again, and looked wry. "You know already what my guess would be. You just like to hear me making an ass of myself. But I believe in the, um, curious things that happen out there-" he waves at the sugar spoon- "and I believe that Gaara must have had some sort of sign, to go to the length of approaching us."

A silence fell; Sakura could see that everyone else in the room was uncomfortable. "Sign?" she said tentatively.

Asuma glanced up with his quick smile. "You haven't been here long enough to have heard any of the queer stories about the old rulers of Suna?"

"No," she said.

"Well, they were sorcerers- or so the story goes. Magicians. They could call the lightning down on the heads of their enemies, that sort of thing- useful stuff for founding an empire."

Sir Jiriya snorted.

"No, you're quite right; all we had was matchlocks and enthusiasm. Even magic wanes, I suppose. But I don't think it's waned quite away yet; there's some still living in those mountains out there. Gaara can trace his bloodlines back to Aerin an Tor, who ruled Suna in its golden age- with or without magic, depending on which version you prefer."

"If they weren't legends themselves," put in Sir Jiriya.

"Yes. But I believe they were real,"said Asuma. "I even believe they wielded something we prosaic Konohains would call magic."

Sakura stared at him, fascinated, and his smile broadened. "I'm quite use to being taken for a fool about this. It's doubtless part of the reason why I'm still a colonel, and still at the General Mundy. But there are a number of us old soldiers whose memories go back to the Suna of thirty, forty, years ago who say the same thing."

"Oh, magic," said Sir Jiriya disgustedly, but there was a trace of uneasiness in his voice as well. "Have you ever seen lightning come to heel like a dog?"

Asuma through his politeness looked a little stubborn. "No. I haven't. But it's true enough at least that the men who have going up against Gaara's father and grandfather were plagued by the most astonishing bad luck. And you know that the King and Council back at Konoha would give their eyeteeth to push our border back the way we've been saying we would for the last eighty years."

"Bad luck?" said Lady Tsunade. "I've heard the stories, of course- some of the old ballads are very beautiful. But- what sort of bad luck?

Asuma smiled again. "I admit it does begin to sound foolish when one tries o explain it. But things like rifles- or matchlocks- misfiring, or blowing up; mot just a few, but many- yourself, and your neighbor, and his neighbor. And their neighbors. A cavalry charge just as it reaches full stretch, he horses begin to trip and fall down as if they've forgotten how to gallop- _all_ of them. Men mistake their orders. Supply wagons lose their wheels. Half a company all suddenly get grit in their eyes simultaneously and can't see where they're going-or where to shoot. The sort of little things that always happen, but carried far beyond probability. Men get superstitious about such things, however much they scoff at elves and witches and so on. And it's pretty appalling to see your cavalry crumple up like they're all drunk, while these madmen with nothing but swords and axes and bits of leather armor are coming down on you from every direction- and nobody seems to be firing at them from your side. I assure you I've seen it."

Naruto shifted in his chair. "And Gaara-"

"Yes, Gaara," the colonel continues, sounding still as unruffled as when he thanked Lady Tsunade for his cup of tea, while Sir Jiriya's face was getting redder and redder and he huffed through his clenched teeth. It was hard no to believe Asuma; his voice was too level, and it rang with sincerity. "They say that in Gaara the old kings have come again. You know he's begun to reunite some of the outlying tribes- the ones that don't seem to owe anyone any particular allegiance, and who live by a sort of equal-handed brigandry on anyone within easy reach."

"Yes, I know," said Sir Jiriya.

"Then you may also have heard some of he other sort of stories they've begun to tel about him. I imagine he can call lightning to heel if he feels like it."

"This is the man who's coming here today?" said Lady Tsunade; and even she now sounded a little startled.

"Yes, Tsunade, I'm afraid so."

"If he's so blasted clever," muttered Sir Jiriya, "what does he want with us?"

Asuma laughed. "Come now, Jiriya. Don't be sulky. I don't suppose even a magician can make half a million Northerners disappear like raindrops in the ocean. We certainly need him o keep the passes through his mountains closed. And i my be that he had decide that he needs us- to mop us the leaks, perhaps."

Lady Tsunade stood up, and Sakura reluctantly followed her. "W will leave you to discuss it. Is there- is there anything I could do, could arrange? I'm afraid I know very little about entertaining native chieftains. Do you suppose he will want lunch?" She spread her hands and looked around the table. Sakura suppressed a smile, at the thought of proper little Lady Tsunade offering sandwiches, with the crusts neatly trimmed off, and lemonade to this barbarian king. What would he look like? She thought: I've never seen even the merchants from far away, look subdues and... a little wary.

"Oh, bosh," said Sir Jiriya. "I wish I knew hat he wanted- lunch o anything else. Part of what makes all this so complicated is that we know the Free Hillfolk have a very complicated code of honor- but we know almost nothing about what it consists of."

"Almost," murmured Asuma.

"We could offend them mortally and not even know it. I don't know if Gaara is coming alone, or with a select band of his thousand best men, all armed to the teeth and carrying lightning bolts in their back pockets."

"Now, Jiriya," Asuma said.

"We've invited him here-"

"-because the fort is not built for receiving guests of honor," Asuma said easily as Sir Jiriya paused.

"And," Sir Jiriya added plaintively, "it doesn't look quite so _warlike _here." Asuma laughed. "But four o'clock in the morning," Sir Jiriya said.

"I think we should be thankful that it occurred to him to give us any warning at all. I don't believe it's the sort of thing he's accustomed to having to think of." The colonel stood up, and Naruto promptly took his place behind him. Sir Jiriya was still pacing about the room, cup in hand, as the ladies prepared to leave. "My apologies for spoiling you morning to nor purpose," said Colonel Asuma. "I daresay he will arrive sometime and we will deal with him, but I don't think you need put yourselves out. His message said merely that he desired an audience with the Konoha's District Commissioner- not quite his phrase, but that's the idea- and the general in command of the fort. He'll have to make do with me, though; we don't rate a general. The Hill-kings don't go in much for gold plate and red velvet anyway- I think. I hope this is a business meeting."

"I hope so too," murmured Sir Jiriya to his teacup.

"And- at the moment- we can't do much more than wait and see," said the colonel. "Have some more of this excellent tea, Jiriya. What's in your cup must be quite cold by now."

Sakura and Lady Tsunade took their leave, and the older woman closed th breakfast-room doors with a sigh. Sakura smiled. Lady Tsunade turned back to her in time to see the smile, and returned it ruefully. "Very well. We will leave the men to do their uncomfortable waiting alone. I am going to visit Mrs. Kurenai, you are going to go riding with Ino and Hana and bring them back here for luncheon."

"Perhaps under the circumstances-" began Sakura, but Lady Tsunade shook her head.

"I see no reason why you should not. If he is here, those girls have very pretty manners, and are just whom I would invite if we were to give a formal dinner. And-" here her smile broadened and became as mischievous as a girl's- "if he has brought his thousand best men, we shall be terribly short of women, and you know how much I dislike an unbalanced table. I shall have to invite Mrs. Kurenai as well. Have a pleasant ride, dear."

Sakura changed into her riding-clothes, mounted her placid pony, already bridled and saddled and held for her by one of the Residency's many servants, and rode off in a thoughtful mood toward her meeting with her two friends. She wondered first what and how much she should tell Ino and Hana; and, second, found herself hoping that his Gaara would stay at least long enough for her to see him. Would a witch-king look any different than any other man?

The sun was already hot. She pushed her had back long enough for a cautions squint at the sky. It was more dun-colored that blue, as if it, like everything else near Istan, were faded by the fierceness of its sun. It looked as hard as a curved shell overhead, and brittle, as if a thrown lance might pierce it. The placid pony shuffled along, ears flopping, and she stared out over the sands. The woods to the west of her father's house were old, hundreds of years old, tangles with vine and creeper. Ancient trees had died and, no having room to fall, crumbled where they stood. No landlord had thought the old forest worth clearing and the land put to use; but it had made wonderful jungle for herself and Naru as children, to be bandits in, and hunt dragons through. Its twisted shadows had always been welcome to her; when she grew older she liked the feeling of great age that the forest gave her, of age and of a vast complicated life that had nothing to do with her and that she need not try to decipher.

The desert, with the black sharp-edged mountains around it, was as different from what she was accustomed to as any landscape would be; yet she found after only a few week in Istan that she was falling by degrees in love with it: with the harsh sand, the hot sun, and merciless gritty winds. And she found that the desert lured her as her own green land never had- but what discovery it lured her toward she could not say.

It was an even greater shock to realize that she was no longer homesick. She missed her occupation; and even more she missed her father. She had left so soon after the funeral that it was difficult to believe that he was dead, that he was not still riding around his estate in his shabby coat, waiting for her to return. Then she found that she remembered her parents together again; as if her mother had died recently, or her father five years ago- or as if the difference, which had been so important, no longer mattered. She didn't dream of honeysuckle and lilac. She remembered them with affection, but she looked across the swirled sand and small obstinate clumps of brush and was content with where she was. A small voice whispered to her that she didn't even wans to go home again. She wanted to cross the desert and climb into the mountains in the ease, the mountains no Konohain had ever climbed.

She often speculated about how other people saw the land here. Her brother never mentioned it one way or another. She was accustomed to hearing the other young people refer to "that hateful desert" and "the dreadful sun." Ino and Hana didn't; they had lived in one part of another of Suna for most of their lives- "except three years our mother took us to Konoha, to acquire polish, she said"- and to both of them, Sunain sun and weather, whether it be on the fertile red earth of the south, with the eternal fight against th jungle to keep the fields clear, or the northeast Border, were simply things that were there, were part of their home, to be accepted and adjusted to. Sakura had asked them how they liked Konoha, and they had had to pause and think bout it. "It was very different," Ino said at last, and Hana nodded. Ino started to say something else, stopped and shrugged. "Very different," she repeated.

"Do you like it?" pursued Sakura.

"Of course," said Ino, surprised.

"We've liked all the places we've lived," said Hana, "once we made some friends."

"I liked the snow in the north," offered Ino, "and the fur cloaks we had to wear there in the winter."

Sakura gave it up.

The older people at the station seemed to put up with the land around them as they would put up with any other disadvantage of their chosen occupation. Sunain service, civilian and military, bred stoicism in all those who didn't give up and go back to Konoha after the first few years. The Masai's making-the-best-of-it attitude was almost as tangible as mosquito netting.

Sakura had one won an admission from Mr. Yamanaka, Ino and Hana's father. There were several people to dinner at the Residency that evening, among them the Yamanakas. Mr. Yamanaka had been seated across from her at dinner, and had not appeared to pay any attention to the conversation on the other side of the table. But later in the evening he appeared at her side. She was surprised; he spoke rarely enough at social gatherings, and was notorious around the station for avoiding young unattached ladies, including his daughter's friends.

They sat in silence at first; Sakura wondered if she should say anything, and if so, what. She was still wondering when he said: "I couldn't help hearing some of what that young chap next to you was saying at dinner." He stopped again, but this time she waited patiently for him o continue and did not try to prompt him. "I wouldn't pay too much attention, if I were you."

The young chap in question had been telling her about the hateful desert and the dreadful sun. He was a subaltern at the fort, had been there for two years and was looking forward to his escape in two more. The subaltern had continued: "But I wouldn't want you to think we have no change of seasons here. We do: we have winter. It rains steadily for three months, and everything gets moldy, including you."

Mr. Yamanaka said: "I rather like it here. There are those of us who do." He then stood up and wandered away. She had not spoken a word to him.

But she remembered what he said later as she realized that she too was becoming one of those who liked it here. She pondered who else might belong o their select club. It was a game, and she amused herself with it when she ran out of polite conversation. She took a mental note of all those who did not complain of the hear, the wind, he unequal rainfall; and then tried to separate those like herself who actually enjoyed being scratchy with blown sand and head-achy from glare, from those like Ino and Hana who were merely cheerfully adaptable.

Sakura at last settled on Colonel Asuma as the most likely member of her club, and began to consider if there was any way to broach the subject with him. She thought that perhaps there was a club rule that read. Thou shalt not speak. But her chance came at last, less than a fortnight before Gaara's messenger arrived at the Residency at four a.m.

It was at another small dinner party and the Masai's. When the gentlemen brought themselves and an appalling reek of Sir Jiriya's finest cigars into the drawing room to join the ladies, Colonel Asuma cam across the window seat beside Sakura. She had been looking out at the mysterious white pools the moon poured across the desert.

"Open the window a bit," he said, "and let some of this smoke out. I can see poor Tsunade being brave."

"Cigars should be like onions," she said, unfastening the catch and pushing back the pane. "Either the whole company does, or the whole company does not."

Asuma laughed. "Poor Tsuna! She would spoil many a party, I fear. Have you ever smoked a cigar?"

She smiled with a glint in her emerald eyes, and he reflected that some of the young men had labeled her cold and humorless. "Yes, I have: that is how I know. My father was used to giving dinners for his hunting friends, and I would be the only woman there. I was not going to eat in my room, like a punished child, and I liked to stay and listen to the stories they told. They permitted themselves to become accustomed to my presence, because I could ride and shoot respectably. But the smoke, after a few hours, would become unbearable."

"So your father-?" prompted Asuma.

"No, not my father; he taught me to shoot, against his better judgment, but he drew the line at teaching me to smoke. It was one of his friends- Naruto's godfather, in fact. He gave me a handful of cigars at the end of one of these very thick evenings and told me to smoke them, slowly and carefully, somewhere that I could be sick in private. And the next time the cigars went around the table, I was to take one for myself- and he'd help me stand up to my father. I was the only way to survive. He was right."

"I shall have to tell Jiriya," said Asuma, grinning. "He is always delighted to find another cigar-lover."

Her gaze had wandered again to the moonlight, but now she turned back. "No, thank you, Colonel. I am not that. It was the stories that made it worth it. I only appreciate smoke when I'm seeing things in it."

"I know what you mean, but you must promise _not_ to tell Jiriya that," he replied. "And for heaven's sake call me Asuma. Three months is quite long enough to be called Colonel more often than business demands."

"Mmm," she said.

"Ino and Hana do it very nicely. Say 'Asuma.'"

"Asuma," she said.

"There, you see? And for your next lesson I will walk across the room and ask you to say it again, and you will see how quickly I turn around and say 'Yes?'"

She laughed. It was hard to remember that Asuma was a few years older than Sir Jiriya; the latter was portly and dignified and white-haired. Asuma was lean and brown, and his hair was iron gray. Sir Jiriya was polite and kind; Asuma talked to one like a friend.

"I see you staring out of the windows ofter, at our Sunain wilds. Do you see yew hedges and ivy-grown oak and, um, cattle and sheep in green pastures?"

She looked down at her lap, a little uneasily, because she had not thought she as noticed; but here was her chance. She looked up. "No. I see our Sunain wilds."

He smiled a little at the "our." "You're settling in, then? To resigned to too much sun all of the time- except for when there is too much rain? But you haven't seen our winter yet."

"No-no, I haven't. But I'm not resigned." Sh paused, surprised at how hard it as to say aloud, and her club's first law floated across her mind. "I like it. I'm not sure why, but I like it here."

Th smile disappeared and h looked at her thoughtfully. "Do you?" He turned and looked out of the window himself. "There aren't many of us who do. I'm one- you must have guessed that I love the desert. This desert. Even in winter, and the three weeks of jungle after the rain stops and before the sun gets a good hold again. Quite a lot of my griping about being the oldest colonel still active is noise only; I know that if they promoted me they'd almost certainly promote me away from here- to one of the more civilized parts of this uncivilized land. Most of Suna is not like this, you know." He paused. "I don't suppose that means very much to you."

"But it does."

He frowned a little, studying her face. "I don't know whether to say you're very fortunate or very unfortunate. We're strangers here, you know- even I, who've been here forty years. This desert is a little piece of the old Suna. It's not even really under our jurisdiction." He smiled wryly. "Not only can we not understand it, we are not able to administer it." He nodded toward the window. "And the mountains beyond. They stand there, looking at you, and you know you'll never climb them. No one from Konoha ever has- at least to return to tell the tail."

She nodded. "It is not a comfortable passion."

He chuckled. "No; not a comfortable passion."

"Is that why no one ever mentions it? One hears enough for the other side?"

"God! Don't I know it. 'Only four hundred and ninety-six days till I get out of this sand pit.' Yes, I suppose so. It's a strange country, especially this corner of it., and if it gets too much in your blood it makes you strange too. And you don't really want to call attention to it."

She recalled that conversation as she rode; and now she way Ino and Hana jogging toward her. She was thinking again of Gaara, and trying to recall what little she knew of the Free Hillfolk. Asuma had been reluctant to talk about them, and his evasiveness led her to believe that he knew quite a lot about them, because he was always open about saying he didn't know something. He was trying to spare her, perhaps, from her uncomfortable passion.

Oh, glory, she thought, and with a quick leap he curiosity transformed itself into excitement: I do hope he's there when we get back.

The question of what to tell her friends died painlessly. As soon as their ponies came abreast Hana said: "Is he here yet?"

Sakura was expecting a good-morning-and-how-are-you and for a moment didn't know who was meant.

"Gaara," said Ino. "Asuma came to out house to see Daddy before breakfast, told him to go up to the Residency, that they would need him there." Mr. Yamanaka and Asuma were the only people in the station who knew Hill-speech even passably fluently. Most Sunains who ha much contact with Konohains learned Konohain. Sakura had picked up a few Sunain words, but only a few; mo Konohain had thought to write a Sunain grammar for general use, and when she inquired further was told that there was no need for her to learn it. The only person who encouraged her, and ho had aught her the words she did know, was Asuma, and he had no the time to spare for more. Sir Jiriya was reasonably articulate in Sunain speech, but uncomfortable about it. He felt a responsible commissioner should know the language of those he oversees, but it made him no happier to fulfill his own expectations. He kept and interpreter near at hand.

"Gaara," breathed Hana, as if the name were a charm. "Daddy says that the Hillfolk have never liked us much-"

"We've always know that," put in Ino.

"-so he'll probably slip in and out again and we'll ever even see him"

"I've permission to invite you to lunch," said Sakura. "If he's there at all, we'll see him."

"Oh, how wonderful!" said Hana. "Surely even he won't have finished his business before lunch. Let's not ride far; we should see something when he comes, and then we'll know when to ride back. It's very tiresome to have a real king come to visit and not even have an excuse to meet him."

"Do you know anything of the Free Hillfolk?" said Sakura. They rode at an angle way from the Residency, where they could keep an eye on it over their shoulders. "I don't. No one will tell me anything."

They both laughed. "The Hillfolk are the best-kept secret in Suna," said Ino. "I mean, we know they exist. Some of them come here- to the station, I mean- for the spring Fair." Sakura looked at he. "Oh, surely Lady Tsunade has told you about our Fair," Ino said. "After three months of the rains we come out of hiding and work off our foul temper by holding a Fair-"

"-where we sell to each other all the ridiculous little bags and bonnets and dolls and footstools that we've made during the rains to keep from going mad because we couldn't go out," Hana continued.

"Yes, most of it is nonsense. But everyone is very gay for the first two or three weeks after the fain stops. The weather is cool enough- the only time all year you can go out even at midday; and there're _green_ things growing up from the ground, and everything you own is spread on the roofs and hanging from the windowsills, and they're green too," Ino added with a grimace. "We decorate the streets and the square with paper flowers and real flowers and banners and ribbons, and th whole town looks like it's on holiday, with the dresses and blanket hanging out everywhere. We do have real flowers here- besides the eternal pimchie- although nothing like what you're used to at home, I daresay. Everything grows tremendously for two weeks, so for the third week, Fair week, everything is green and blossoming- even the desert, if you can believe it."

"Then of course the sun kills everything again. That's the fourth week. And you know what it's like here the rest of the time."

"Yes, but the Fair- everyone comes to the Fair. The Hillfolk too, a few of them, although never anyone very special. Certainly never the king. And it's not all the bead purses that our sort has been making in despair. There are always some really lovely things, mostly that the Sunains themselves have made. Even the servants aren't expected to do as much, you know, during the rains. After the first few weeks you're far too cross yourself to give many orders to anyone else."

"But mostly the best things come up from the south. It's only way up here that the weather's so ridiculous, but the south knows about out Fair, and the merchants know that when we break out of winter prison we're so mad with our freedom that we're fit to buy _anything_, so they come up in force."

"There are Fairs, or celebrations of spring of one kind or another, all around here, but ours is the biggest."

"Well," said Hana, "we've the biggest in things to buy and so forth; and we're the only Konohain station up here. But there're quite a number of Sunain villages around here, and they take spring very seriously. Lots of signing and dancing, and that kind of thing. And they tell the most beautiful stories, if you can find someone to translate into Konohain. Which isn't often."

"We have singing and dancing too," said Ino.

"Yes, I know," said Hana slowly; "but it's not the same. Our dancing is just working i off, after being inside for so long. Theirs means something."

Sakura looked at her curiously. You mean asking the gods for a good yea- that kind of thing?"

"I suppose so," said Hana. "I'm not quite sure."

"No one will talk about anything really Sunain to Konohains," said Ino. "You must have noticed it."

"Yes- but I'm new here."

"You're always new here if you're a Konohain," said Ino. "It's different in th south, But we're on the Border here, and everyone is very aware that Freemen live in those Hills you see out your windows every day. The Sunains that do work for you, or with you, are very anxious to prove how Konohain they really are, and loyal to all things Konoha, so they won't talk; and the others won't for the opposite reasons."

"You're beginning to sound like Daddy," said Hana.

"We've heard him say it all often enough," Ino responded.

"But the Hillfolk," said Sakura.

"Yes. The one thing I suppose we all have in common is a joy in hose three short weeks of spring. So a few Hill folk come to our Fair."

"They don't act very happy, though," said Hana. "They come in those long robes they always wear- over their faces too, so you can't see if they're smiling or frowning; and some of them with those funny patched sashes around their waists. But they do come, and they stay several days- they have the grandest horses you've ever seen. They pitch camp outside the station, and they always set guards, quite openly, as if we weren't to be trusted-"

"Maybe we aren't," murmured Ino.

"-but they never sell their horses. They bring the most gorgeous tapestries, though, and embroidered sashes- much nicer than the ones they wear themselves. These they sell. They stalk around the edge of the big central square, th old marketplace, carrying all this vivid stuff, while the rest of us are laughing and talking and running around. It's a bit eerie."

"No it's not," said Ino. "You listen to he stories too much."

Hana blushed. After a pause she said, "Do you see anything at the Residency?"

"No," said Sakura. "What stories?"

There was another pause while Ino looked at Hana and Hana looked at her pony's mane. "My fault," said Ino presently. "We're not supposed to talk about them. Daddy gets really annoyed if he catches us. The stories are mostly about magic. Gaara and his people are supposed to be rotten with it, even in this day and age, and Gaara himself is supposed to be more than a little mad."

"Magic?" said Sakura, remembering what Asuma had said earlier. "Mad?" He hadn't said anything about madness. "How?"

They both shrugged. "We've never managed to find out," said Ino.

"And we can usually wring what we want to know out of Daddy eventually," said Hana, "so it must be pretty dreadful."

Ino laughed. "You read to many novels, Hana. It's just as likely that Daddy won't talk about it because he refuses to admit t might be real- the magic, I mean. Asuma believes it- he and Daddy argue about it sometimes, when they don't think anyone else is around. The madness, if that's what it is, is tied up somehow in the king's strength- in return for having power beyond mortal men or some such, he has to pay a price of some kind of mad fits."

"Who reads too many novels?" said Hana, and Ino grinned.

"It does rather catch the imagination," she said, and Hana nodded.

"No wonder you're so eager to set eyes on him," said Sakura.

"Yes. I know it's silly of me, but I feel maybe it'll show somehow. He'll be eight feet tall and have a third eye in the middle of his forehead," said Hana.

"Heavens," said Sakura.

"I hope not," said Ino.

"Well, you know how the legends go," said Hana.

"No, not really," said her sister repressively. "Even when Daddy is willing to translate some, you can tell by the pauses that he's leaving a lot out."

"Yes, but even so," persisted Hana. "The old kings and queens were supposed to be taller than mortal-"

"The Sunains are mostly shorter than we are, at least the ones we see," interrupted Ino. "A kind could look quite ordinary to us and be very tall for them."

"-and you can tell the royal blood by something about they eyes."

There was another pause. Sakura said, "Something?"

Again they both shrugged. "Something," said Hana. "That's one of the things Daddy always leaves out. Like the madness."

"You're hoping he'll froth at the mouth," said Ino.

Hana threw a peevish look at her sister. "No. I'll settle for the third eye."

This conversation had taken them well away from the outlying houses of the station, and the dust kicked up by their ponies' feet was giving up even the pretense of being anything other that desert sand. A Silence fell; Ino suggested a canter, which was dully accomplished. The sun was hot that when they pulled up again, after only a few minutes, the ponies' shoulders were dark with sweat. Sakura sent another of her long looks across the desert, and had to squint against the shivering light.

"Do you think we might turn back now?" Hana asked wistfully, shading her eyes with an elegantly white-gloved hand.

Sakura grinned. "We can spend the rest of the morning in my sitting-room, if you like. It overlooks the front door, you know."

Hana gave her a grateful look, Ino chuckled; but thy all three turned their ponies' heads with dispatch and sent them jogging homeward as quickly as the heat would allow.

By the time they reached the suggestion of shade offered by the thin determined trees marking the outskirt of the station proper, Sakura was hot and lightly headachy, and cross with herself for rushing back for no reason. Nothing could have escaped their notice; the Residency stood a little apart from the rest of the station, in its own grounds, and the road that ended at its front door had been under their eves for the entire ride. They had been gone only a little over an hour. Sakura considered suggesting that they meet again after another hour, time enough to change and have a bath; in her present condition she didn't feel like meeting any kings, mad or otherwise.

But she stole a glance at Hana and saw how anxious she was not to miss anything; and he though, Oh well, I can wash my face at least, and we can all have some cold lemonade, and watch the front door in comfort.

The horses walked slowly up the street to the Residency. Ino pulled off her hat and fanned herself with it. Sakura shut her eyes for a moment. An execrable habit, she tole the insides of her eyelids. What if his fat sleepy fourposter with ears and a tail should bold, or shy suddenly? What if the sky should fall? responded the insides of her eyelids.

The fourposter stopped dead in the road and raised its head a few inches just as Hana said in a strangled whisper: "Look."

Sakura and Ino looked. TH had come nearly to the en of the road; what was left was the broad circle in front of the Residency, suitable for turning carriages in, or forming up half a regiment. Off to one side, where the tall house cast a little shade, seven horses and one man stood. The horses stood in little semi circle around the man, who sat cross-legged near the wall of the house. They stood quietly, stamping a foot now and then, and occasionally one would put out it's nose to touch the man; and he would stroke its cheek a moment, and it would raise its head again. The first thing Sakura notice was the beauty of these animals; not one was less than sixteen hands high, with long clean legs and tails that nearly touched the ground. Three were chestnuts, heir coats shining even in the dusty shadow; one gray, one dark bay, one golden dun; but the finest horse stood farthest from three fat ponies standing foolishly in the carriage drive. He was a blood bay, red as fire, with black legs and tail; he stood aloof from the other horses and ignored the man at his feet. He stared back at the newcomers as if it were his land he stood on, and they intruders. As the other horses slowly swung their heads around to see what their leader was looking at, Sakura noticed something else; they wore no bridles.

"He's here," said Ino flatly.

Hana drew a deep breath. "How?" she said.

"Look at those _horses_," said Sakura, and the longing in her voice was so clear that even she heard it.

Ino looked away from the impossible sight of seven horses that had made their way invisibly across a bleak desert right in front of three people who were looking for them, and smiled with sympathy at her friend. "Haven't you ever seen a Hill horse before? They're suppose to be the finest in Sunain."

"And they never sell them," said Sakura, remembering.

Ino nodded, although Sakura's eyes never left the horses. "Asuma would give an arm even to ride one once."

"No bridles," said Sakura.

"No stirrups, either," said Ino, and Sakura saw that this was true. They wore saddles that were little more than padded skins, cut and elegantly rodded; and she could see the gleam of embroidery on the girths and pommels. Not a horse move from its pace in the semicircle, although all no, with the man, watched the three ponies and their riders.

"Horses," said Hana disgustedly. "Don't you understand what they mean? They mean that he's here already, and we never noticed a thing. If that's not magic, what is?" She prodded her pony forward again. Ino and Sakura followed slowly and stopped before the steps. Three stable boys appeared, ready to take the ponies back to the stable behind the house.

Sakura's feet had only just touched the ground- the boy hovering anxiously to one side, since he had learned through bitter experience that this Konohain did not with to be assisted while dismounting- when there was a commotion at the entrance to the house. Sakura turned around in time to see the heavy door thrown violently open, so that its hinge protested; and out strode a man dressed in loose white robes, with a scarlet sash around his waist. Several more figures darted out in his wake, and collected around him where he paused on the verandah. He was the axis of a nervous wheel, moving his head slowly to examine the lesser people who turned around him and squeaked at him without daring to come too near. With a shock Sakura recognized four of these small mortals: Sir Jiriya and Mr Yamanaka, Asuma and her own brother, Naruto. The man in white was tall, thought no taller than Naruto or Sir Jiriya. But there was a quivering in the air around him, like th heat haze over the desert, shed from his white sleeves, cast off by the shadows of his scarlet sash. These who stood near him looked small and pale and vague, while this man was so bright he hurt the eyes. More men came quietly out behind the Konohains and stood a little to one side, but they kept their eyes on their king. He could be no one else. This must be Gaara.

Sakura took a deep breath. He didn't look insane or inhuman. He did look uncooperative. He shook his had and frowned at something someone said, and Sir Jiriya looked very unhappy. Gaara shrugged, and made a sweeping movement with his arms, like a man coming out of a forest gratefully into he sunlight. He took a long step forward to the edge of the verandah. Then Asuma took two quick steps toward him and spoke to him, a few words only, urgently and Gaara turned again, as it seemed unwillingly, and looked back. Asuma held out his hand, palm down and fingers spread; and so they stood for a long minute. Gaara dropped his eyes to the hand stretched toward him, then looked into the face of its owner. Sakura, watching, held her breath without knowing why.

With a nasty feeling in th pit of her stomach she saw a look of terrible strain cross Asuma's face as the Hill-king held his gaze; and the outstretched hand trembled very slightly. Gaara slowly reached out his own hand and touched the back of Asuma's wrist with two fingers; the hand dropped to Asuma's side one more, but as if it were heavy as a stone, and the man slumped in relief like a murderer reprieved at the scaffold. The look of strain slid off his face to be replaced by one of great weariness.

Gaara swing around again, and set his foot on the top stair, and no one moved to stop him. Five men in the loose robes of the Hillfolk separated themselves from the verandah shadows and made to follow. Sakura found she could not take her eyes of the king, but from th corners of her eyes she noticed that the other men too wore vivid sashes: gold and orange and green and blue and purple. There was nothing to indicate the king but the glitter of his presence.

Sakura stood only a few feet from the bottom step, holding her pony's bridle. Ino and Hana were somewhere behind her, and the stable boy stood frozen a few steps from her elbow. Gaara still had not noticed the, and Sakura stared, fascinated, as he cam nearer. There seemed a roaring in the air that beat on her eardrums and pressed against her eyeballs till she blinked. Then he looked up abruptly, as if from some unfathomable depth of thought, and say her: their eyes met.

The man's eyes were yellow as gold, the hot liquid gold in a smelter's furnace. Sakura found it suddenly difficult to breathe, and understood the expression on Asuma's face; she almost staggered. Her hand tightened on the bridle, and the pony dropped its head and mouthed the bit uncomfortably. The hear was incredible. It was as though a thousand desert suns beat down on her. Magic? she thought from inside the thunder. Is this what magic is? I come from a cold country, where the witches live in cool green forests. What am I doing here? She was the anger the man was holding in check; the anger stared at her through the yellow eyes, and swept through the glistening white robes.

Then is was over. He looked away; he came down the last steps and past her as if she did not exist; and she cowered out of his way so that no corner of his white sleeve should touch her. The man with the horses emerged from the shade, riding one of the chestnuts; and the six others wet up to their riders and nuzzled them. Th blood bay reached the king first, and greeted him with a low whinny. Gaara mounted with an easy leap Sakura could not even follow with her eyes, although she could see anger informing the sot of his legs against the great stallion's sides. The horse felt it too; without moving, all its muscles were suddenly taut, and its stillness was the quiet before battle. The other men mounted. Gaara never looked at them but the red stallion plunged forward at a gallop, and the other men followed; and the sound the horses' hooves made on th hard earth suddenly reminded Sakura how unnaturally silent everyone had been since Asuma's last words. The inaudible thunder faded with the sight of the colored sashes and the bright flanks of the Hill horses. Sakura woke up to who she was, an where; Sir Jiriya and Asuma and Mr. Yamanaka looked their normal size again, and she had a raging headache


End file.
